Search form

You are here

Rudolph Herzog - A Short History of Nuclear Folly

Wednesday, May 1, 2013 - 7:00pm

In the spirit of Dr. Strangelove and The Atomic Café, A Short History of Nuclear Folly ($26.00) is a blackly sardonic people’s history of atomic blunders and near-misses revealing the hushed-up and forgotten episodes in which the great powers gambled with catastrophe. Rudolph Herzog, the acclaimed author of Dead Funny, presents a devastating account of history’s most irresponsible uses of nuclear technology. From the rarely discussed nightmare of “Broken Arrows” (40 nuclear weapons lost during the Cold War) to “Operation Plowshare” (a proposal to use nuclear bombs for large engineering projects, such as the construction of a second Panama Canal using 300 H-Bombs), Herzog focuses in on long-forgotten nuclear projects that nearly led to disaster.

Rudolph Herzog is the author of Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler’s Germany. His documentary on humor in the Third Reich, Laughing With Hitler, scored top audience ratings on German Channel 1 and was also broadcast on the BBC. He is the son of the celebrated filmmaker Werner Herzog.

In the spirit of Dr. Strangelove and The Atomic Caf , a blackly sardonic people's history of atomic blunders and near-misses revealing the hushed-up and forgotten episodes in which the great powers gambled with catastrophe